(First published in the Bengal Post, 7 August 2010)
The December ‘season’ of Madras has been a unique event in the city’s cultural calendar for decades starting from 1927, when it debuted as an adjunct to the Indian National Congress’s annual meet. Exclusively focused on Carnatic or south Indian classical music, it grew from a festival of sorts into a major annual conference featuring not only concerts but also lecture-demonstrations of great quality and variety. It heralded the birth of the Madras Music Academy, now in existence for over 80 years and considered the Mecca of Carnatic music. Its annual award, the Sangita Kalanidhi, is a coveted honour, something every musician will die for—in fact, some greats have died before the august body could honour them. The magnificent bharatanatyam exponent T Balasaraswati has been the only artist other than a musician or musicologist to receive the award, but after some tentative attempts to feature dance alongside music in its annual conference, the Academy has in recent years added a separate dance festival to its schedule, held in January every year. Dance is celebrated annually by such major institutions as Kalakshetra—founded by Rukmini Devi Arundale—and Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, with the latter’s Nritya Chudamani regarded as probably the highest award in dance.
Neither music nor dance is any more the preserve of any of these institutions. Hundreds of sabhas—institutions supported by membership and sponsorship and headed by their sometimes all-powerful secretaries, the Tamil Nadu version of the impresario of the west—have sprung up everywhere. These conduct music, dance and theatre festivals galore during the annual ‘season’ often described as the Margazhi (the Tamil month from mid-December to mid-January) festival, but now expanded both forward and backward to include November and end-January.
Modern Tamil theatre peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, but gradually lost out to cinema and eventually to television, only comedies of the lightest variety that frequently offer no more than strings of jokes surviving the onslaught. Recent efforts to revive serious Tamil theatre seem to be succeeding, though it is still early days. Unfortunately, not many serious plays are being written in Tamil because of lack of performance opportunities and vice versa.
English theatre, in contrast, is alive and kicking. The Madras Players, among India’s oldest amateur English theatre groups, have been in existence for over 50 years, and have constantly reinvented themselves to stay relevant. It is the arrival less than a decade ago of Evam, a young team of theatre professionals, that galvanised the English theatre scenario in Chennai. Though their plays may not always belong to the highest class, the group have marketed themselves expertly and brought young audiences back to the stage. Amateur groups like Masquerade, JustUs Repertory, Theatre Nisha, The Boardwalkers, Perch, Stagefright, and ASAP have managed to transform a hitherto somnolent theatre space into a happening, exciting movement, even if not always producing high quality fare. The more than 100-years-old Museum Theatre, once an acoustic marvel and still a fine theatre despite the depredations of progress is no longer an oasis of excellence, with new facilities in the city like the Sivagami Pethachi auditorium and the Chinmaya Heritage hall offering excellent choices to theatre addicts.
Though there is year-round activity, the serious theatre action in Chennai nowadays starts in August with the Hindu Metroplus Theatre Festival. In its sixth year now, the festival has been a roaring success in the city, drawing sizable audiences who pay very respectable sums of money for their tickets. The festival has in the past two or three years assumed an international complexion, with participation from the US, Europe, Korea and Singapore. This year the festival is being staged at one of the finest theatre spaces anywhere, the Mutha Venkata Subba Rao auditorium inside the Lady Andal School premises. Seating a little over a thousand people, the hall is beautifully appointed and boasts excellent acoustics. It is state-of-the-art in every respect and makes theatregoing an enjoyable experience. It is the place to be seen at for young and old theatre enthusiasts.
The Hindu has also added a new dimension to the music scene of Chennai with its Friday Review November Fest, in which it showcases classical and folk music from all over the subcontinent as well as the west. Drawing an eclectic crowd, the festival carefully avoids treading on the toes of those occupying the traditional space in music and dance, thereby offering entertainment that is very different from ‘season’ fare.
August is also the month when Madras Week—increasingly threatening to turn into Madras Month—is celebrated with several city experts producing interesting programmes on a variety of aspects of the city’s life since its founding more than four hundred years ago. Add the New Festival—earlier the Other Festival—an alternative package of music and dance from all over the whole world, a host of arts and crafts exhibitions, film festivals of a dizzying number of nationalities, and that hardy perennial The Madras Book Fair in January, and the once month-long Madras season has well and truly entrenched itself as a 6-month long celebration of the best Chennai has to offer.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
A retrospective
“When do we start rehearsals?” was the crisp reply from Sundar (Dhritiman to the world) Chaterji to my wife Gowri Ramnarayan’s email to him attaching the first draft of what was to become her first play, Dark Horse, Walking Down Arun Kolatkar’s Lane.
The protagonist of the play, the reclusive, iconoclastic Mumbai-based poet, had died a few days earlier, and Gowri, who had literally hunted him down a decade earlier for a newspaper interview, had been moved by the power of his poetry to write a script that included a number of his verses to be enacted on stage.
One thing led to another and soon was born JustUs Repertory, the theatre group that was the brainchild of Dhritiman Chaterji and a few other theatre fiends, the late Bhagirathi Narayanan the most prominent of them. Nearly six years, six plays and some fifty performances letter, incredible as it may seem, the Madras Players, arguably the oldest English theatre group in India, recently collaborated with JustUs to produce a Gowri Ramnarayan Retrospective of three plays at Chennai. The shows on 2, 3 and 4 July this year were sell-outs, suggesting that the fledgling of 2005 has come some way from its tentative beginnings. And when we look back with nostalgia and some pardonable pride, we cannot help feeling that the journey would not have even begun without Dhritiman’s inspired recognition of the potential of the Dark Horse script.
Like most Indians of our vintage, my wife and I had been blown away by Dhritiman’s standout performance in Satyajit Ray’s Pratidwandi, back in the early 1970s. South Madras was hardly the place we would have expected to run into him years later. It was with incredulity therefore that I caught sight of this look-alike of his at a cigarette shop in the neighbourhood I used to frequent. I ran into him frequently, but it took me months to gather the courage to walk up to him one evening and ask him if he was Dhritiman Chaterji, the celebrated actor, fully expecting to be told he was very sorry to disappoint me, but he was Somasundaram or Mahalingam or Ramaswamy!
To my delight, it was indeed Dhritiman, who had moved here from Calcutta with his wife Ammu and son Pablo in the 1980s. Soon we became friends, and realised not only that he had no starry airs about him, but also that we shared common interests in the arts (and sport). We often ran into one another at literary events and the theatre, and even watched one memorable ODI together, when rain forced us to repair to the Madras Cricket Club bar after the game was abandoned. Watching his own films with him, ones directed by Ray in particular, with Dhritiman furnishing background information and sidelights, was a highly rewarding experience, as was listening to recordings of his conversations with the great master. Gowri and he memorably discussed Ray films for film buffs at the British Council once, and the seeds for artistic collaboration were sown.
It was thanks to Dhritiman’s initiative that we brought Dark Horse and a subsequent play by Gowri, Water Lilies, to Kolkata. With his iconic and powerful performances as Arun Kolatkar in the former and a Serbo-Hungarian author in the latter, Dada, as they all called him with great affection, was a huge influence on the younger members of the troupe. Not only did he set a great example with his no-nonsense, disciplined work ethic, always on time for rehearsals and always focussed on his role, he loosened up enough after the plays, to show the boys and girls the sights and sounds of the city, not averse to shaking a stylish leg in their company. Of course, they felt comfortable enough with him despite his star status to enjoy pulling his leg, claiming that his roles as writers in the two plays allowed him to carry the script hidden inside books on stage. They even go a step further to relate the apocryphal tale of how he once read from the wrong page of the script!
Today, JustUs Repertory has earned a reputation for serious theatre—strong scripts, well-rehearsed performances, good production values, and a striving for excellence—with its consistent showing in several cities in India, but the memory of our first foray outside Chennai, at the Birla Sabhagarh at Gariahat in the Hutch Festival of 2005 is inerasable, for more reasons than one. Dada had fallen ill close to the date of the show, and there had been some suspense about his making the trip, and we were understandably nervous about our Kolkata debut. Dada and the rest of the cast won the hearts of a an appreciative, even indulgent audience, and the live music of the play—composed by Gowri and sung by Savita Narasimhan—stole the show. We had arrived!
The protagonist of the play, the reclusive, iconoclastic Mumbai-based poet, had died a few days earlier, and Gowri, who had literally hunted him down a decade earlier for a newspaper interview, had been moved by the power of his poetry to write a script that included a number of his verses to be enacted on stage.
One thing led to another and soon was born JustUs Repertory, the theatre group that was the brainchild of Dhritiman Chaterji and a few other theatre fiends, the late Bhagirathi Narayanan the most prominent of them. Nearly six years, six plays and some fifty performances letter, incredible as it may seem, the Madras Players, arguably the oldest English theatre group in India, recently collaborated with JustUs to produce a Gowri Ramnarayan Retrospective of three plays at Chennai. The shows on 2, 3 and 4 July this year were sell-outs, suggesting that the fledgling of 2005 has come some way from its tentative beginnings. And when we look back with nostalgia and some pardonable pride, we cannot help feeling that the journey would not have even begun without Dhritiman’s inspired recognition of the potential of the Dark Horse script.
Like most Indians of our vintage, my wife and I had been blown away by Dhritiman’s standout performance in Satyajit Ray’s Pratidwandi, back in the early 1970s. South Madras was hardly the place we would have expected to run into him years later. It was with incredulity therefore that I caught sight of this look-alike of his at a cigarette shop in the neighbourhood I used to frequent. I ran into him frequently, but it took me months to gather the courage to walk up to him one evening and ask him if he was Dhritiman Chaterji, the celebrated actor, fully expecting to be told he was very sorry to disappoint me, but he was Somasundaram or Mahalingam or Ramaswamy!
To my delight, it was indeed Dhritiman, who had moved here from Calcutta with his wife Ammu and son Pablo in the 1980s. Soon we became friends, and realised not only that he had no starry airs about him, but also that we shared common interests in the arts (and sport). We often ran into one another at literary events and the theatre, and even watched one memorable ODI together, when rain forced us to repair to the Madras Cricket Club bar after the game was abandoned. Watching his own films with him, ones directed by Ray in particular, with Dhritiman furnishing background information and sidelights, was a highly rewarding experience, as was listening to recordings of his conversations with the great master. Gowri and he memorably discussed Ray films for film buffs at the British Council once, and the seeds for artistic collaboration were sown.
It was thanks to Dhritiman’s initiative that we brought Dark Horse and a subsequent play by Gowri, Water Lilies, to Kolkata. With his iconic and powerful performances as Arun Kolatkar in the former and a Serbo-Hungarian author in the latter, Dada, as they all called him with great affection, was a huge influence on the younger members of the troupe. Not only did he set a great example with his no-nonsense, disciplined work ethic, always on time for rehearsals and always focussed on his role, he loosened up enough after the plays, to show the boys and girls the sights and sounds of the city, not averse to shaking a stylish leg in their company. Of course, they felt comfortable enough with him despite his star status to enjoy pulling his leg, claiming that his roles as writers in the two plays allowed him to carry the script hidden inside books on stage. They even go a step further to relate the apocryphal tale of how he once read from the wrong page of the script!
Today, JustUs Repertory has earned a reputation for serious theatre—strong scripts, well-rehearsed performances, good production values, and a striving for excellence—with its consistent showing in several cities in India, but the memory of our first foray outside Chennai, at the Birla Sabhagarh at Gariahat in the Hutch Festival of 2005 is inerasable, for more reasons than one. Dada had fallen ill close to the date of the show, and there had been some suspense about his making the trip, and we were understandably nervous about our Kolkata debut. Dada and the rest of the cast won the hearts of a an appreciative, even indulgent audience, and the live music of the play—composed by Gowri and sung by Savita Narasimhan—stole the show. We had arrived!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
A road by any other name
(First appeared in The Bengal Post, Kolkata)
The first time I set foot on Shakespeare Sarani—in 1968 on my first visit to Kolkata—I was struck by how strange that sounded. What was the antiquity of the name, I wondered; was it the whim of some legislator who fancied the bard’s works? Where did the impulse to rename Theatre Road—back in 1964 to commemorate the great playwright’s 400th birth anniversary, I have since learnt—spring from? Where today is that wonderful spirit that could celebrate a writer from another continent, unsullied by parochial considerations?
Here is my favourite story about a road name from the same city of Kolkata—where else could it happen? Harrington Street, on which was situated the American Consulate, was renamed Ho Chi Minh Sarani during the Viet Nam War. What a delicious piece of (no doubt deliberate) irony! Politically motivated the move might have been, but it was at least prompted by considerations beyond the need to accommodate narrow sectarian or local interests. Ideology rather than chauvinism was perhaps the driving force behind it.
The grand sweep of an extra-national vision appears to be lacking in the recent flurry of name changes for Kolkata streets, roads and avenues, with history taking the back seat and making way for populism. The only problem with such attempts to glorify personalities through road names is that they seldom work. Can you imagine the most devout worshipper of the venerable saint referring to Park Street as Mother Teresa Sarani or the most ardent Congressman calling Red Road Indira Gandhi Sarani, the new names given to these famous locations? How does anyone expect the average Kolkatan to call Ballygunge Circular Road by any other name?
In Chennai, decades after the state government renamed Mount Road—the arterial road that connects the city to St. Thomas Mount—Anna Salai, people still call it Mount Road. Many other such ‘reforms’ have met with a similar fate.
The city has a long history of street names receiving the wrath of its politicians and politickers, but of organic changes too, with often hilarious results. Hamilton Bridge during British times became Ambattan Varavadi, an adaptation of the name by the local populace, and eventually came to be known as Barber’s Bridge—a reverse translation of the word ambattan now considered derogatory but a perfectly acceptable Tamil word for barber back then. More recent examples of mutilation include the four Seaward Roads of Valmiki Nagar, a south Chennai suburb, by the corporation to read ‘C’ Ward Roads. D’Monte in D’Monte Colony has been variously misspelt as D Mandi or D Mondy, and Turnbulls Avenue becomes Turn Bull Avenue.
The drive launched a few decades ago to eliminate caste from the city’s street names overlooked the minor detail that the revised versions were not the real names of the persons commemorated. Official abbreviations like Krishnama for Krishnamachari proved quite ludicrous, while Nair Road and Chari Street posed serious challenges to the painters of the roadsigns: removing the caste left them with no name. At the same time, powerful lobbies seemed to be at work—or was it sheer ignorance?—in the retention of names like Muthuramalinga Thevar Salai.
The latest attempt to rewrite the history of the city’s streets is the announcement by the Mayor that 52 Chennai streets will have new names to pay homage to Tamil scholars acknowledged by the state government. While this will be the first mega swoop of its kind, British street names have been systematically replaced with Indian names for many years now as in other parts of India. Many old streets retain their British names despite these periodic attempts.
Though renaming streets has rarely worked, the names of political and other leaders given to new suburbs have naturally always stuck. No problem whatever with Indira Nagar, Nehru Nagar, Kamaraj Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, Kasturba Nagar and so on, but Rajiv Gandhi Salai for Old Mahabalipuram Road, Kalki Krishnamurti Road for Lattice Bridge Road, or Uttamar Gandhi Road for Nungambakkam High Road? No way. (‘Uttamar’ was an absurd attempt to Tamilise ‘Mahatma’ by someone in power who apparently knew neither Tamil nor Sanskrit. Elsewhere in the city are numerous Mahatma Gandhi Roads, each of which is of course known as MG Road, as in every other Indian city).
In his final decade, the late Semmangudi Srinivasier, doyen of Carnatic music and a great raconteur, was fond of regaling his friends with the story of how Yama, the god of death, took away his neighbour instead of him, misled by the old number-new number confusion that followed the renumbering campaign the corporation launched then. A decade later, the chaos continues, with Chennaivasis still unsure of addresses. They await the 52 new street names with bated breath, sure that they will add to their woes of missed letters and conducted tours by the city’s famed autorickshaws.
The author is Editor-in-chief, SRUTI magazine, author, translator, cricket columnist, teacher and former first class cricketer.
The first time I set foot on Shakespeare Sarani—in 1968 on my first visit to Kolkata—I was struck by how strange that sounded. What was the antiquity of the name, I wondered; was it the whim of some legislator who fancied the bard’s works? Where did the impulse to rename Theatre Road—back in 1964 to commemorate the great playwright’s 400th birth anniversary, I have since learnt—spring from? Where today is that wonderful spirit that could celebrate a writer from another continent, unsullied by parochial considerations?
Here is my favourite story about a road name from the same city of Kolkata—where else could it happen? Harrington Street, on which was situated the American Consulate, was renamed Ho Chi Minh Sarani during the Viet Nam War. What a delicious piece of (no doubt deliberate) irony! Politically motivated the move might have been, but it was at least prompted by considerations beyond the need to accommodate narrow sectarian or local interests. Ideology rather than chauvinism was perhaps the driving force behind it.
The grand sweep of an extra-national vision appears to be lacking in the recent flurry of name changes for Kolkata streets, roads and avenues, with history taking the back seat and making way for populism. The only problem with such attempts to glorify personalities through road names is that they seldom work. Can you imagine the most devout worshipper of the venerable saint referring to Park Street as Mother Teresa Sarani or the most ardent Congressman calling Red Road Indira Gandhi Sarani, the new names given to these famous locations? How does anyone expect the average Kolkatan to call Ballygunge Circular Road by any other name?
In Chennai, decades after the state government renamed Mount Road—the arterial road that connects the city to St. Thomas Mount—Anna Salai, people still call it Mount Road. Many other such ‘reforms’ have met with a similar fate.
The city has a long history of street names receiving the wrath of its politicians and politickers, but of organic changes too, with often hilarious results. Hamilton Bridge during British times became Ambattan Varavadi, an adaptation of the name by the local populace, and eventually came to be known as Barber’s Bridge—a reverse translation of the word ambattan now considered derogatory but a perfectly acceptable Tamil word for barber back then. More recent examples of mutilation include the four Seaward Roads of Valmiki Nagar, a south Chennai suburb, by the corporation to read ‘C’ Ward Roads. D’Monte in D’Monte Colony has been variously misspelt as D Mandi or D Mondy, and Turnbulls Avenue becomes Turn Bull Avenue.
The drive launched a few decades ago to eliminate caste from the city’s street names overlooked the minor detail that the revised versions were not the real names of the persons commemorated. Official abbreviations like Krishnama for Krishnamachari proved quite ludicrous, while Nair Road and Chari Street posed serious challenges to the painters of the roadsigns: removing the caste left them with no name. At the same time, powerful lobbies seemed to be at work—or was it sheer ignorance?—in the retention of names like Muthuramalinga Thevar Salai.
The latest attempt to rewrite the history of the city’s streets is the announcement by the Mayor that 52 Chennai streets will have new names to pay homage to Tamil scholars acknowledged by the state government. While this will be the first mega swoop of its kind, British street names have been systematically replaced with Indian names for many years now as in other parts of India. Many old streets retain their British names despite these periodic attempts.
Though renaming streets has rarely worked, the names of political and other leaders given to new suburbs have naturally always stuck. No problem whatever with Indira Nagar, Nehru Nagar, Kamaraj Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, Kasturba Nagar and so on, but Rajiv Gandhi Salai for Old Mahabalipuram Road, Kalki Krishnamurti Road for Lattice Bridge Road, or Uttamar Gandhi Road for Nungambakkam High Road? No way. (‘Uttamar’ was an absurd attempt to Tamilise ‘Mahatma’ by someone in power who apparently knew neither Tamil nor Sanskrit. Elsewhere in the city are numerous Mahatma Gandhi Roads, each of which is of course known as MG Road, as in every other Indian city).
In his final decade, the late Semmangudi Srinivasier, doyen of Carnatic music and a great raconteur, was fond of regaling his friends with the story of how Yama, the god of death, took away his neighbour instead of him, misled by the old number-new number confusion that followed the renumbering campaign the corporation launched then. A decade later, the chaos continues, with Chennaivasis still unsure of addresses. They await the 52 new street names with bated breath, sure that they will add to their woes of missed letters and conducted tours by the city’s famed autorickshaws.
The author is Editor-in-chief, SRUTI magazine, author, translator, cricket columnist, teacher and former first class cricketer.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Gowri Ramnarayan Retrospective on 2, 3, 4 July
RURAL PHANTASY
Play, Direction, Design: Gowri Ramnarayan
What passions blaze in the hearts of young men in a sleepy village in Tanjavur zillah when a beautiful firebrand, a Calcutta-returned Pudumai Penn (New Woman) brimful of reformist ardour, enters their lives? In a rollicking musical comedy based on a short story by Kalki Krishnamurti and recalling the height of the Indian independence struggle, Rural Phantasy, Gowri Ramnarayan reimagines the nationalist era in 1940s Tamilnadu through drama, music, dance, and visuals inspired by popular posters and period “talkies”.
Sutradhar V Balakrishnan
Nati/Shakuntalai Akhila Ramnarayan
Calcutta Ranganatham PC Ramakrishna
Village Men Nand Menon, Venkatesh Aadhithya, Vignesh Balaji, Azar, Siddhant Venkatesh, Vijay Ram
Village Women Anjana Anand, Sunandha Ragunathan, Radhika
Vairavelan, Sunitta Menghanaani, Gaayathriy Satchithanandar, Alicia Stephen, Soumiya Balasubramanian, Anusha Venkatraman,
Maithreye Murali
Shyamanand Chaterji Varun Aiyer
Vocals TM Krishna & Sangeetha Sivakumar
Violin Amritha Murali
Mridangam Arun Prakash
Music Direction Gowri Ramnarayan
Dance Direction Anjana Anand
Lights TV Sridharan
Sets Michael Muthu
Production Manager Shruthi P Atmaram
Props Shruthi
Backstage Venkat S, Neha Balthazar, Sunitta, Shruthi
FLAME OF THE FOREST
Play, Direction, Design: Gowri Ramnarayan
“Is there a civilised way to wage war?” broods Mahendra Pallava, the playwright and philosopher-king whose realm is terrorised by a vast Chalukya army. Inspired by Kalki’s novel Sivakamiyin Sapatham, and the sculptural marvels of Mamallapuram, Flame of the Forest front-stages Mahendra’s quandary and the tragic romance of Mamalla, the Pallava prince and the court dancer Sivakami through dialogue, music, and dance. The play raises vital questions about the role of religion, politics and art in a war-torn world that resonate with greater force today.
Mahendra Pallava V Balakrishnan
Paranjoti Senior PC Ramakrishna
Paranjoti Varun Aiyer
Sivakami Senior Priyadarsini Govind
Sivakami Anjana Anand
Pulikesi Vidyuth Srinivasan
Jaina Monk/Mamalla Siddanth Venkatesh
Buddhist Monk/Courtier Nand Menon
Kapalika/Courtier Sunandha Ragunathan
Kapalika/Courtier Venkatesh Aadhithya
Bharavi/Kapalika Yogi Sheejith Krishna
Kamakshi Akhila Ramnarayan
Shatrughnan /Courtier Vignesh Balaji
Courtier Alicia Stephen
Temple Dancer Maithreye Murali
Chinnappan Vijay Ram
Music Gowri Ramnarayan
Vocals TM Krishna & Sangeetha Sivakumar
Violin Amritha Murali
Mridangam Arun Prakash
Veena Sriram R
Dance Choreography Manjari, Priyadarsini Govind, Sheejith Krishna
(Jati in Sivakami’s court performance by Bhagavatulu Seetarama Sarma)
Lights TV Sridharan
Sets Michael Muthu
Production Manager Shruthi P Atmaram
Props Sunitta Menghnaani
Backstage Venkat S, Neha Balthazar, Sunitta, Shruthi
ONE DAY IN ASHADHA
Direction, Design: Gowri Ramnarayan
Can fame corrupt the soul? Dismissed as a wastrel, Kalidasa, a young cowherd in a remote village, finds his only support in young Mallika, who persuades Kalidasa to accept a royal appointment as Poet Laureate in Ujjaini. Years later, a destitute Mallika sees a drenched, dishevelled Kalidasa stumbling into her home again. Can they make a new beginning?
Six scenes from Kalidasa classics (Sakuntalam, Kumarasambhavam, Meghasandesam) interlace this production of One Day in Ashadha, written by the modern Hindi playwright Mohan Rakesh and translated by V Ramnarayan.
Sutradhar/Anuswar Siddanth Venkatesh
Nati /Sangini Shruthi P Atmaram
Mallika Akhila Ramnarayan
Ambika Sreelatha Vinod
Kalidasa V Balakrishnan
Dantul Nand Menon
Matul PC Ramakrishna
Nikshep Vidyuth Srinivasan
Vilom Varun Aiyer
Rangini Sunitta Menghnaani, Alicia Stephen
Anunasik Vignesh Balaji
Priyangumanjari Sunandha Ragunathan
Kalidasa’s Characters (Dancers) G Narendra, Anjana Anand
Music Gowri Ramnarayan
Vocals TM Krishna & Sangeetha Sivakumar
Violin Amritha Murali
Mridangam Arun Prakash
Dance Choreography G Narendra, Sheejith Krishna
Lights TV Sridharan
Sound Harish Swaminathan
Costumes Lakshmi Srinath
Sets Michael Muthu
Production Manager Shruthi P Atmaram
Props Maithreye Murali
Backstage Venkat S, Neha Balthazar, Maithreye, Sunitta, Shruthi
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
The three plays in this retrospective each belong to the ancient, medieval and modern world.
But my protagonists, whether firebrand nationalist Sakuntalai (1940), philosopher king Mahendra Pallava (7th century) or the poet Kalidasa (circa 4th century), face the same questions. They grapple with unexpected violence, wondering if faith in ideals, hope for lasting harmony and peace, and trust in the healing power of art, have any meaning in the midst of oppression.
We too wonder. Can violence be resisted at all? How do we deal with loss and loneliness? Is there any solace for pain? Are beauty and compassion as real as terror and suffering? Can serenity be reached in a blasts-riddled world?
In this retrospective, the actors, musicians and dancers explore these perennial issues, resonating with a chilling urgency in our modern world.
Gowri Ramnarayan
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Playwright-director Dr Gowri Ramnarayan is Deputy Editor with the national English daily The Hindu. The author of five plays, she has served as vocal accompanist to Carnatic musician MS Subbulakshmi, authored books, translated two plays of Vijay Tendulkar, and been a member of the Fipresci Jury of critics at international film festivals in London, Venice, Valladolid, Oslo and Mumbai. Her first play Dark Horse won two national awards (Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, 2007, Best Innovative Music and Special Commendation, Best Play).
ABOUT THE MADRAS PLAYERS
The oldest English theatre group in India, The Madras Players celebrated its golden jubilee in 2005. Having produced over 250 plays, the focus of the group today is to celebrate Indian writing and Indian playwrights.
This is the first time The Madras Players present a three-play retrospective of a contemporary playwright.
ABOUT JUSTUS
JustUs Repertory was launched in 2005 to produce new work blending music, dance and drama, to explore the staggering weight of historical, political and literary pasts which theatre must engage in, to represent the complexities of contemporary existence.
Play, Direction, Design: Gowri Ramnarayan
What passions blaze in the hearts of young men in a sleepy village in Tanjavur zillah when a beautiful firebrand, a Calcutta-returned Pudumai Penn (New Woman) brimful of reformist ardour, enters their lives? In a rollicking musical comedy based on a short story by Kalki Krishnamurti and recalling the height of the Indian independence struggle, Rural Phantasy, Gowri Ramnarayan reimagines the nationalist era in 1940s Tamilnadu through drama, music, dance, and visuals inspired by popular posters and period “talkies”.
Sutradhar V Balakrishnan
Nati/Shakuntalai Akhila Ramnarayan
Calcutta Ranganatham PC Ramakrishna
Village Men Nand Menon, Venkatesh Aadhithya, Vignesh Balaji, Azar, Siddhant Venkatesh, Vijay Ram
Village Women Anjana Anand, Sunandha Ragunathan, Radhika
Vairavelan, Sunitta Menghanaani, Gaayathriy Satchithanandar, Alicia Stephen, Soumiya Balasubramanian, Anusha Venkatraman,
Maithreye Murali
Shyamanand Chaterji Varun Aiyer
Vocals TM Krishna & Sangeetha Sivakumar
Violin Amritha Murali
Mridangam Arun Prakash
Music Direction Gowri Ramnarayan
Dance Direction Anjana Anand
Lights TV Sridharan
Sets Michael Muthu
Production Manager Shruthi P Atmaram
Props Shruthi
Backstage Venkat S, Neha Balthazar, Sunitta, Shruthi
FLAME OF THE FOREST
Play, Direction, Design: Gowri Ramnarayan
“Is there a civilised way to wage war?” broods Mahendra Pallava, the playwright and philosopher-king whose realm is terrorised by a vast Chalukya army. Inspired by Kalki’s novel Sivakamiyin Sapatham, and the sculptural marvels of Mamallapuram, Flame of the Forest front-stages Mahendra’s quandary and the tragic romance of Mamalla, the Pallava prince and the court dancer Sivakami through dialogue, music, and dance. The play raises vital questions about the role of religion, politics and art in a war-torn world that resonate with greater force today.
Mahendra Pallava V Balakrishnan
Paranjoti Senior PC Ramakrishna
Paranjoti Varun Aiyer
Sivakami Senior Priyadarsini Govind
Sivakami Anjana Anand
Pulikesi Vidyuth Srinivasan
Jaina Monk/Mamalla Siddanth Venkatesh
Buddhist Monk/Courtier Nand Menon
Kapalika/Courtier Sunandha Ragunathan
Kapalika/Courtier Venkatesh Aadhithya
Bharavi/Kapalika Yogi Sheejith Krishna
Kamakshi Akhila Ramnarayan
Shatrughnan /Courtier Vignesh Balaji
Courtier Alicia Stephen
Temple Dancer Maithreye Murali
Chinnappan Vijay Ram
Music Gowri Ramnarayan
Vocals TM Krishna & Sangeetha Sivakumar
Violin Amritha Murali
Mridangam Arun Prakash
Veena Sriram R
Dance Choreography Manjari, Priyadarsini Govind, Sheejith Krishna
(Jati in Sivakami’s court performance by Bhagavatulu Seetarama Sarma)
Lights TV Sridharan
Sets Michael Muthu
Production Manager Shruthi P Atmaram
Props Sunitta Menghnaani
Backstage Venkat S, Neha Balthazar, Sunitta, Shruthi
ONE DAY IN ASHADHA
Direction, Design: Gowri Ramnarayan
Can fame corrupt the soul? Dismissed as a wastrel, Kalidasa, a young cowherd in a remote village, finds his only support in young Mallika, who persuades Kalidasa to accept a royal appointment as Poet Laureate in Ujjaini. Years later, a destitute Mallika sees a drenched, dishevelled Kalidasa stumbling into her home again. Can they make a new beginning?
Six scenes from Kalidasa classics (Sakuntalam, Kumarasambhavam, Meghasandesam) interlace this production of One Day in Ashadha, written by the modern Hindi playwright Mohan Rakesh and translated by V Ramnarayan.
Sutradhar/Anuswar Siddanth Venkatesh
Nati /Sangini Shruthi P Atmaram
Mallika Akhila Ramnarayan
Ambika Sreelatha Vinod
Kalidasa V Balakrishnan
Dantul Nand Menon
Matul PC Ramakrishna
Nikshep Vidyuth Srinivasan
Vilom Varun Aiyer
Rangini Sunitta Menghnaani, Alicia Stephen
Anunasik Vignesh Balaji
Priyangumanjari Sunandha Ragunathan
Kalidasa’s Characters (Dancers) G Narendra, Anjana Anand
Music Gowri Ramnarayan
Vocals TM Krishna & Sangeetha Sivakumar
Violin Amritha Murali
Mridangam Arun Prakash
Dance Choreography G Narendra, Sheejith Krishna
Lights TV Sridharan
Sound Harish Swaminathan
Costumes Lakshmi Srinath
Sets Michael Muthu
Production Manager Shruthi P Atmaram
Props Maithreye Murali
Backstage Venkat S, Neha Balthazar, Maithreye, Sunitta, Shruthi
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
The three plays in this retrospective each belong to the ancient, medieval and modern world.
But my protagonists, whether firebrand nationalist Sakuntalai (1940), philosopher king Mahendra Pallava (7th century) or the poet Kalidasa (circa 4th century), face the same questions. They grapple with unexpected violence, wondering if faith in ideals, hope for lasting harmony and peace, and trust in the healing power of art, have any meaning in the midst of oppression.
We too wonder. Can violence be resisted at all? How do we deal with loss and loneliness? Is there any solace for pain? Are beauty and compassion as real as terror and suffering? Can serenity be reached in a blasts-riddled world?
In this retrospective, the actors, musicians and dancers explore these perennial issues, resonating with a chilling urgency in our modern world.
Gowri Ramnarayan
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Playwright-director Dr Gowri Ramnarayan is Deputy Editor with the national English daily The Hindu. The author of five plays, she has served as vocal accompanist to Carnatic musician MS Subbulakshmi, authored books, translated two plays of Vijay Tendulkar, and been a member of the Fipresci Jury of critics at international film festivals in London, Venice, Valladolid, Oslo and Mumbai. Her first play Dark Horse won two national awards (Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, 2007, Best Innovative Music and Special Commendation, Best Play).
ABOUT THE MADRAS PLAYERS
The oldest English theatre group in India, The Madras Players celebrated its golden jubilee in 2005. Having produced over 250 plays, the focus of the group today is to celebrate Indian writing and Indian playwrights.
This is the first time The Madras Players present a three-play retrospective of a contemporary playwright.
ABOUT JUSTUS
JustUs Repertory was launched in 2005 to produce new work blending music, dance and drama, to explore the staggering weight of historical, political and literary pasts which theatre must engage in, to represent the complexities of contemporary existence.
Friday, May 21, 2010
A Brahmin Art
Is Carnatic music a brahmin art for the consumption of brahmin audiences promoted by brahmin institutions? There are no simple answers to the question. True, there have been and there still are, great non-brahmin practitioners of the art. Many of them are instrumentalists, and in the case of the nagaswaram and the tavil it is unlikely that any brahmin has ever been a performer.
Is the brahmin domination of the art the result of discrimination, an overt conspiracy of exclusion practised by a league of musicians, patrons and the media, or is it a more subtle form of apartheid? Is it just a case of brahmins showing the greatest aptitude for and interest in classical music? Is it merely an accident of history that a number of great non-brahmin musicians do not have non-brahmin disciples to carry their tradition forward? Is the relative scarcity of non-brahmin vocalists a reflection of their inability or refusal to enunciate lyrics in brahmin accents? Are they more at home in the lyrics devoted to the Tamil god Murugan rather than paeans to Rama or Krishna?
Whatever happened to the Tamil Isai movement after the first fine rapture decades ago? Is the south’s relative insulation from war and conflict the reason why the music has remained more tradition-bound, more orthodox, more rooted in grammar than say Hindustani music, which has seen far greater migrations and hence a much wider ethnic range of musicians? Has the emphasis on kalpita or composed music with a preponderance of bhakti been an inhibitor of Carnatic music’s reach beyond a small community? Does western classical music offer a parallel history for study and comparison? How do you democratise an art and yet retain its purity and rigour?
A recent nagaswaram concert succeeded in bringing to the audience “an experience of pristine Carnatic music”—as advertised by the organisers. A magnificent Kambhoji raga alapana followed by a grand O Ranga sayi—and in fact all the ragas and compositions of the evening which were founded on the creations of the great vaggeyakaras and pathantaras of the past—reinforced the belief brahmin musicians of the past were inspired by nagaswaram, but also suggested an equal possibility of reverse osmosis. The music sounded no less ‘brahmin’ than the best vocal music of our time.
Is the brahmin domination of the art the result of discrimination, an overt conspiracy of exclusion practised by a league of musicians, patrons and the media, or is it a more subtle form of apartheid? Is it just a case of brahmins showing the greatest aptitude for and interest in classical music? Is it merely an accident of history that a number of great non-brahmin musicians do not have non-brahmin disciples to carry their tradition forward? Is the relative scarcity of non-brahmin vocalists a reflection of their inability or refusal to enunciate lyrics in brahmin accents? Are they more at home in the lyrics devoted to the Tamil god Murugan rather than paeans to Rama or Krishna?
Whatever happened to the Tamil Isai movement after the first fine rapture decades ago? Is the south’s relative insulation from war and conflict the reason why the music has remained more tradition-bound, more orthodox, more rooted in grammar than say Hindustani music, which has seen far greater migrations and hence a much wider ethnic range of musicians? Has the emphasis on kalpita or composed music with a preponderance of bhakti been an inhibitor of Carnatic music’s reach beyond a small community? Does western classical music offer a parallel history for study and comparison? How do you democratise an art and yet retain its purity and rigour?
A recent nagaswaram concert succeeded in bringing to the audience “an experience of pristine Carnatic music”—as advertised by the organisers. A magnificent Kambhoji raga alapana followed by a grand O Ranga sayi—and in fact all the ragas and compositions of the evening which were founded on the creations of the great vaggeyakaras and pathantaras of the past—reinforced the belief brahmin musicians of the past were inspired by nagaswaram, but also suggested an equal possibility of reverse osmosis. The music sounded no less ‘brahmin’ than the best vocal music of our time.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Colloquium: Viswanathan Anand & KR Venkatraman
http://chennaionline.com/video/index.aspx?vid=1259&src=hp#
http://chennaionline.com/video/index.aspx?vid=1260&title=Vishy+Anand+%26+K+R+Venkataraman+%3a+A+Unique+Discussion+-+Part+II
http://chennaionline.com/video/index.aspx?vid=1261&title=Vishy+Anand+%26+K+R+Venkataraman+%3a+A+Unique+Discussion+-+Part+III
http://chennaionline.com/video/index.aspx?vid=1260&title=Vishy+Anand+%26+K+R+Venkataraman+%3a+A+Unique+Discussion+-+Part+II
http://chennaionline.com/video/index.aspx?vid=1261&title=Vishy+Anand+%26+K+R+Venkataraman+%3a+A+Unique+Discussion+-+Part+III
Friday, May 14, 2010
My name is Vidya
The autobiography of a transgender
Living Smile Vidya
Translated by V Ramnarayan
Price Rs. 100
Buy at www.nhm.in
Chapter 2
Appa
When I was born the first time, my parents named me Saravanan. I was their sixth child, born after years of prayers for a boy child. In fact, their first had been a boy, unfortunately still born. Four girls followed, two of them succumbing to unknown diseases. In the circumstances, I realised pretty early in life what joy my arrival must have brought my parents.
My family wasn’t exactly well off. My father Ramaswami was known as Nattamai or chieftain in Puttur, next to Tiruchi. The title must have been somebody’s idea of a joke, for my father was hardly any kind of chief, certainly not the kind immortalised by Tamil cinema. He was a municipal worker of the lowest rung, a sweeper. He married my mother Veeramma in 1973. They started life together in a small hut they built on an unoccupied piece of land on Attumanthai (flock of sheep) Street.
My mother was someone special. Her name meant a brave woman, and she was every bit that. Brave and hard working, sweet tempered. She was also a typical Indian wife, who submitted to her husband’s tyrannical ways. She died in an accident when I was eleven.
The pain and awareness of their oppression on the basis of their caste haunted my parents all their lives. Their intense yearning for a son must have sprung from their desperate hope that he would change the course of their abject lives.
Appa, my father, was at first in the business of milk supply. I remember that he had job opportunities in the police and Southern Railway. He was not too keen on such careers; he perhaps believed he must do his own business, however small. Making both ends was never easy. His relatives were determined he must find employment. They repeatedly counselled him, persuading him to join the Tiruchi Refugee Camp as a sweeper.
My father’s life was one of frustration. Frustration that his lack of formal education beyond Class 8 had landed him in a lowly sweeper’s job, for all that it was a government job. He constantly dreamt of his son growing up to be a district collector, surely the top job in India! His dreams, desires, ambitions all centred on his son of the future.
When these dreams were shattered, and his first child to survive turned out to be a daughter, Appa accepted her cheerfully.
Appa adored MG Ramachandran, the famous film star popularly known as MGR. Who wasn’t an MGR fan those days? Appa named his first daughter Radha after the leading lady in an MGR movie. Manju, his second daughter too, was named after a co-star of MGR.
My father was hoping the next baby would be a boy to make up for the loss of his first born and the next two being girls, but that was not to be. The next two were girls, Vembu and Vellachi, and both succumbed to mystery ailments. This was a turning point in Appa’s life which had plumbed the depths of despair.
For long years he had practised his own vague brand of atheism, but now he made an about turn and visited temple after temple. Landing finally at the Vayalur Murugan temple in Tiruchi, he vowed to name his next child after Murugan, the presiding deity there, if he was a boy. He would also shave his head in pious offering of his locks to the lord.
I was born on 25 March 1982. My parents named me Saravanan in fulfilment of my father’s contract with Murugan. Saravanan is one of Murugan’s many names.
My parents had been married in 1973 and I was born nearly ten years later. What challenges they encountered during the period! Their surroundings had undergone considerable change. Vacant land belonging to the government is known as poramboke land. Squatters often occupy such land and eventually occupy it permanently. The poramboke land on Attumanthai Street, where Appa and others had built their huts was now a full-fledged neighbourhood, Bhupesh Gupta Nagar, in memory of a revolutionary of that name. My father, the nattamai, was responsible for the name change.
The street had grown. So had our town. The whole city had been transformed in that decade. Only we were poor as ever. My father continued to be a municipal conservation worker, a sweeper. He was eternally running from pillar post to apply for an electricity connection for our street. At home, my mother and my sisters took care of me, spoiled me. By the time I was ready to go to school, my father had made preparations on a war footing.
I was a privileged member of the household. Of the three children, I was the one person who didn’t have to do any work at home. That was the unwritten law. I enjoyed every kind of concession.
“The only work we want you to do is study,” Appa said. “Remember, it’s your job to study.” He was quite the dictator when it came to my education, allowing no discussion.
“If any of you dares to give him work that interferes with his studies, I’ll kill you,” he warned us.
My two sisters, ten-year-old Radha and six-year-old Manju were so terrified of Appa’s threat that they never let me do any household work. I was the male heir of the family and that was reason enough to exempt me from work of any kind! My doting mother carried me around until I was five years old. When he came back from work in the evening, Appa usually brought us sweets and snacks, and you could bet he slipped in something extra for me every time.
I don’t remember my sisters ever being jealous of me. They showered me with love. From the time she was born, Radha had grown up amidst my parents’ constant prayers for a male child. From a tender age, I remember her as a second mother to me. When Amma died, Radha took over altogether as my mother.
Radha was a goddess to all of us. She took charge of the house as soon as my parents went to work everyday. She could cook when she was barely ten. Sweeping and swabbing the house, washing the dishes and our clothes, storing water—she took care of it all. We should in all fairness have treasured her, treated her like royalty. We did not. I became the sole beneficiary of all the love and affection at home by virtue of my being a boy.
Amazingly, not once did I hear my sisters criticise this overt partiality. Neither Radha nor Manju did that. I think they came to believe in time that looking after me was the very purpose of their existence.
On my part, I studied well, to Appa’s great joy. My academic excellence in contrast with my sisters’ unschooled ways gave him immense pride. I was ranked first in my class in the first grade. When Appa came home and heard the news, he carried me on his shoulders and went round and round Bhupesh Gupta Nagar, broadcasting the news to the world. “My son got the first rank,” he announced again and again.
I remember the day so clearly. Appa loved me but he had never carried me or fondled me before. His public demonstration of his love for me that day was the best reward I could have asked for. My stock in the neighbourhood shot up. I was the boy who was ranked first in his class.
My academic feats complicated life for my sisters. When Amma left for work at five o’clock in the morning, it was Radha’s duty to wake me up to make me study. She had no escape from that responsibility. If I did not study, Radha or Manju would be spanked even more than I.
Up at that early hour, I studied for an hour. Manju went out at six o c’lock to buy tea and porai biscuits. Radha swept the house and started cooking by then, while Manju cleaned the vessels. I had to continue studying until 7.30, when Appa woke up. The girls then had to ensure I bathed, ate my breakfast, got ready and dashed off to school.
Appa gave Radha our daily allowance of one rupee every morning. My share was 40 paise while my sisters each got 30. They could not go to their classrooms without depositing me at mine. As soon as I came home, I had to do my homework. After that started Appa’s lessons for me.
Appa made me do third grade exercises when I was still in the first grade. He made me do the multiplication tables—from one to 20—ten times everyday. “Do you know Abraham Lincoln studied under the street light and became president of America?” he repeated constantly. He made me believe that studying hard in the light of a hurricane lamp would one day make me the district collector.
I had a natural aptitude for studies, and I was an eager student. I was doing quite well at school, but as time progressed, I began to resent Appa’s constant harassment, both mental and physical. I knew he was only doing what was good for me, but my loss of the simple joys and freedom other children of my age enjoyed was an irritant. Was a childhood without games worth living? Home was a virtual prison. Even the love of my mother and sisters could not make up for that.
My father never allowed me to play with boys and girls. I could not understand this blanket ban. I didn’t know if it was because the kids in our neighbourhood were poor students. Our neighbours did not give education a great deal of importance. My father was very different in this aspect from all of them.
It was my sisters’ responsibility to prevent me from giving Appa the slip and going out to play. Radha and Manju kept a constant vigil over my movements, fearful of what Appa might do if I did get away. Sometimes they scolded me and even slapped me playfully if I tried to step out of line. They were so fond of me that they never let me down by carrying tales to Appa, though.
When I came home form a school exam, Appa conducted the same test at home all over again. I was not allowed to go out to play even during vacations. Preparations for the next examination started right then and there.
This was all on top of the demands of my school teachers who made me answer all the question papers at home without omitting a single question even in multiple choice papers. I had to do five question papers in a single day. Invariably, just when I breathed a sigh of relief at completing them, Appa’s home lessons started. If I slowed down my home work to avoid Appa’s exercises, he thrashed me. My body would be bruised black and blue with belt marks all over. If Amma or my sisters tried to stop him, they got belted too. “Weren’t you expected to ensure he did his home work?’ he
screamed at them. I regularly wetted my shorts in fear and shock.
It was around this time that my mother died in a road accident. I was eleven. My grief was immeasurable, indescribable. I had been my mother’s little boy, always at home, always protected by her. It was hard to come to terms with her absence all of a sudden.
Appa made matters worse by remarrying. Lata aka Thangammal, who was younger than Radha, was our new stepmother.
I was too young then to know if what Appa had done was right or wrong. Luckily, Chithi was a good person. She treated me with love. And my sisters were a great consolation, too. The wounds of losing Amma slowly healed. Gradually things changed for the better. Except for Appa’s watching over me. As his dreams for me grew, his oppressive ways too kept increasing in intensity, even though I continued to do well at school. God knows what fears and anxieties troubled him, but he never allowed me a normal childhood.
I remember this incident. I came second in my class in the sixth grade exams. I was scared beyond description that evening. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, afraid of the consequences of showing my report card to my father next morning. When I finally drifted into sleep, I dreamt of Appa belting me. I wetted my bed that night.
As the day dawned, I had no choice but to show Appa my report card, trembling with fear. I received the cruellest punishment of my life that morning.
Remember how Appa carried me around Bhupesh Gupta Nagar the day I was ranked first the first time? Today, unable to bear what he saw as the first crumbling of his dreams, he lifted me much the same way again. Only, this time he dropped me forcefully from a height. He then kicked me in my stomach. I was terror stricken.
He picked me up and thrashed me wildly. My chithi and sisters who tried to protect me got thrashed too. Our pain and tears and screams made no impression on him.
Second rank! Something he had never imagined I would get. It made no sense to me. How could I explain to my father that not much divided the first and second ranks?
He would never understand. He did not. He smashed me around until he got his fury out of his system.
I was a complete mess, beaten black and blue. With no strength left in me, I sought refuge in my sister’s lap. Why didn’t I have a loving father like other children? The question comes back to haunt me even today, every time I see loving men.
Living Smile Vidya
Translated by V Ramnarayan
Price Rs. 100
Buy at www.nhm.in
Chapter 2
Appa
When I was born the first time, my parents named me Saravanan. I was their sixth child, born after years of prayers for a boy child. In fact, their first had been a boy, unfortunately still born. Four girls followed, two of them succumbing to unknown diseases. In the circumstances, I realised pretty early in life what joy my arrival must have brought my parents.
My family wasn’t exactly well off. My father Ramaswami was known as Nattamai or chieftain in Puttur, next to Tiruchi. The title must have been somebody’s idea of a joke, for my father was hardly any kind of chief, certainly not the kind immortalised by Tamil cinema. He was a municipal worker of the lowest rung, a sweeper. He married my mother Veeramma in 1973. They started life together in a small hut they built on an unoccupied piece of land on Attumanthai (flock of sheep) Street.
My mother was someone special. Her name meant a brave woman, and she was every bit that. Brave and hard working, sweet tempered. She was also a typical Indian wife, who submitted to her husband’s tyrannical ways. She died in an accident when I was eleven.
The pain and awareness of their oppression on the basis of their caste haunted my parents all their lives. Their intense yearning for a son must have sprung from their desperate hope that he would change the course of their abject lives.
Appa, my father, was at first in the business of milk supply. I remember that he had job opportunities in the police and Southern Railway. He was not too keen on such careers; he perhaps believed he must do his own business, however small. Making both ends was never easy. His relatives were determined he must find employment. They repeatedly counselled him, persuading him to join the Tiruchi Refugee Camp as a sweeper.
My father’s life was one of frustration. Frustration that his lack of formal education beyond Class 8 had landed him in a lowly sweeper’s job, for all that it was a government job. He constantly dreamt of his son growing up to be a district collector, surely the top job in India! His dreams, desires, ambitions all centred on his son of the future.
When these dreams were shattered, and his first child to survive turned out to be a daughter, Appa accepted her cheerfully.
Appa adored MG Ramachandran, the famous film star popularly known as MGR. Who wasn’t an MGR fan those days? Appa named his first daughter Radha after the leading lady in an MGR movie. Manju, his second daughter too, was named after a co-star of MGR.
My father was hoping the next baby would be a boy to make up for the loss of his first born and the next two being girls, but that was not to be. The next two were girls, Vembu and Vellachi, and both succumbed to mystery ailments. This was a turning point in Appa’s life which had plumbed the depths of despair.
For long years he had practised his own vague brand of atheism, but now he made an about turn and visited temple after temple. Landing finally at the Vayalur Murugan temple in Tiruchi, he vowed to name his next child after Murugan, the presiding deity there, if he was a boy. He would also shave his head in pious offering of his locks to the lord.
I was born on 25 March 1982. My parents named me Saravanan in fulfilment of my father’s contract with Murugan. Saravanan is one of Murugan’s many names.
My parents had been married in 1973 and I was born nearly ten years later. What challenges they encountered during the period! Their surroundings had undergone considerable change. Vacant land belonging to the government is known as poramboke land. Squatters often occupy such land and eventually occupy it permanently. The poramboke land on Attumanthai Street, where Appa and others had built their huts was now a full-fledged neighbourhood, Bhupesh Gupta Nagar, in memory of a revolutionary of that name. My father, the nattamai, was responsible for the name change.
The street had grown. So had our town. The whole city had been transformed in that decade. Only we were poor as ever. My father continued to be a municipal conservation worker, a sweeper. He was eternally running from pillar post to apply for an electricity connection for our street. At home, my mother and my sisters took care of me, spoiled me. By the time I was ready to go to school, my father had made preparations on a war footing.
I was a privileged member of the household. Of the three children, I was the one person who didn’t have to do any work at home. That was the unwritten law. I enjoyed every kind of concession.
“The only work we want you to do is study,” Appa said. “Remember, it’s your job to study.” He was quite the dictator when it came to my education, allowing no discussion.
“If any of you dares to give him work that interferes with his studies, I’ll kill you,” he warned us.
My two sisters, ten-year-old Radha and six-year-old Manju were so terrified of Appa’s threat that they never let me do any household work. I was the male heir of the family and that was reason enough to exempt me from work of any kind! My doting mother carried me around until I was five years old. When he came back from work in the evening, Appa usually brought us sweets and snacks, and you could bet he slipped in something extra for me every time.
I don’t remember my sisters ever being jealous of me. They showered me with love. From the time she was born, Radha had grown up amidst my parents’ constant prayers for a male child. From a tender age, I remember her as a second mother to me. When Amma died, Radha took over altogether as my mother.
Radha was a goddess to all of us. She took charge of the house as soon as my parents went to work everyday. She could cook when she was barely ten. Sweeping and swabbing the house, washing the dishes and our clothes, storing water—she took care of it all. We should in all fairness have treasured her, treated her like royalty. We did not. I became the sole beneficiary of all the love and affection at home by virtue of my being a boy.
Amazingly, not once did I hear my sisters criticise this overt partiality. Neither Radha nor Manju did that. I think they came to believe in time that looking after me was the very purpose of their existence.
On my part, I studied well, to Appa’s great joy. My academic excellence in contrast with my sisters’ unschooled ways gave him immense pride. I was ranked first in my class in the first grade. When Appa came home and heard the news, he carried me on his shoulders and went round and round Bhupesh Gupta Nagar, broadcasting the news to the world. “My son got the first rank,” he announced again and again.
I remember the day so clearly. Appa loved me but he had never carried me or fondled me before. His public demonstration of his love for me that day was the best reward I could have asked for. My stock in the neighbourhood shot up. I was the boy who was ranked first in his class.
My academic feats complicated life for my sisters. When Amma left for work at five o’clock in the morning, it was Radha’s duty to wake me up to make me study. She had no escape from that responsibility. If I did not study, Radha or Manju would be spanked even more than I.
Up at that early hour, I studied for an hour. Manju went out at six o c’lock to buy tea and porai biscuits. Radha swept the house and started cooking by then, while Manju cleaned the vessels. I had to continue studying until 7.30, when Appa woke up. The girls then had to ensure I bathed, ate my breakfast, got ready and dashed off to school.
Appa gave Radha our daily allowance of one rupee every morning. My share was 40 paise while my sisters each got 30. They could not go to their classrooms without depositing me at mine. As soon as I came home, I had to do my homework. After that started Appa’s lessons for me.
Appa made me do third grade exercises when I was still in the first grade. He made me do the multiplication tables—from one to 20—ten times everyday. “Do you know Abraham Lincoln studied under the street light and became president of America?” he repeated constantly. He made me believe that studying hard in the light of a hurricane lamp would one day make me the district collector.
I had a natural aptitude for studies, and I was an eager student. I was doing quite well at school, but as time progressed, I began to resent Appa’s constant harassment, both mental and physical. I knew he was only doing what was good for me, but my loss of the simple joys and freedom other children of my age enjoyed was an irritant. Was a childhood without games worth living? Home was a virtual prison. Even the love of my mother and sisters could not make up for that.
My father never allowed me to play with boys and girls. I could not understand this blanket ban. I didn’t know if it was because the kids in our neighbourhood were poor students. Our neighbours did not give education a great deal of importance. My father was very different in this aspect from all of them.
It was my sisters’ responsibility to prevent me from giving Appa the slip and going out to play. Radha and Manju kept a constant vigil over my movements, fearful of what Appa might do if I did get away. Sometimes they scolded me and even slapped me playfully if I tried to step out of line. They were so fond of me that they never let me down by carrying tales to Appa, though.
When I came home form a school exam, Appa conducted the same test at home all over again. I was not allowed to go out to play even during vacations. Preparations for the next examination started right then and there.
This was all on top of the demands of my school teachers who made me answer all the question papers at home without omitting a single question even in multiple choice papers. I had to do five question papers in a single day. Invariably, just when I breathed a sigh of relief at completing them, Appa’s home lessons started. If I slowed down my home work to avoid Appa’s exercises, he thrashed me. My body would be bruised black and blue with belt marks all over. If Amma or my sisters tried to stop him, they got belted too. “Weren’t you expected to ensure he did his home work?’ he
screamed at them. I regularly wetted my shorts in fear and shock.
It was around this time that my mother died in a road accident. I was eleven. My grief was immeasurable, indescribable. I had been my mother’s little boy, always at home, always protected by her. It was hard to come to terms with her absence all of a sudden.
Appa made matters worse by remarrying. Lata aka Thangammal, who was younger than Radha, was our new stepmother.
I was too young then to know if what Appa had done was right or wrong. Luckily, Chithi was a good person. She treated me with love. And my sisters were a great consolation, too. The wounds of losing Amma slowly healed. Gradually things changed for the better. Except for Appa’s watching over me. As his dreams for me grew, his oppressive ways too kept increasing in intensity, even though I continued to do well at school. God knows what fears and anxieties troubled him, but he never allowed me a normal childhood.
I remember this incident. I came second in my class in the sixth grade exams. I was scared beyond description that evening. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, afraid of the consequences of showing my report card to my father next morning. When I finally drifted into sleep, I dreamt of Appa belting me. I wetted my bed that night.
As the day dawned, I had no choice but to show Appa my report card, trembling with fear. I received the cruellest punishment of my life that morning.
Remember how Appa carried me around Bhupesh Gupta Nagar the day I was ranked first the first time? Today, unable to bear what he saw as the first crumbling of his dreams, he lifted me much the same way again. Only, this time he dropped me forcefully from a height. He then kicked me in my stomach. I was terror stricken.
He picked me up and thrashed me wildly. My chithi and sisters who tried to protect me got thrashed too. Our pain and tears and screams made no impression on him.
Second rank! Something he had never imagined I would get. It made no sense to me. How could I explain to my father that not much divided the first and second ranks?
He would never understand. He did not. He smashed me around until he got his fury out of his system.
I was a complete mess, beaten black and blue. With no strength left in me, I sought refuge in my sister’s lap. Why didn’t I have a loving father like other children? The question comes back to haunt me even today, every time I see loving men.
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